New Install - Questions and Problems(?)

[ThePaladinTech]

OK - So I jumped in with both feet. And I may have moved a little too quickly.  My server has a total of 17 drives: 1 SSD with OS on it. 12 drives controlled by Adaptec 31205 controller, and 4 drives controlled by Motherboard (in addition to SSD and DVD).  the server is running windows 10 pro. I may be giving a bit to much info for the problem but want to cover everything in case it helps.

 

When I originally set ​it up it I created a pool using MS storage spaces. and then I did the trial of drive pool.  My original MS storage spaces pool was 4 drives. and my original StableBit boot was 4 different drives.

Well I relatively quickly decided to go the StableBit route, as I could see no good way of continually upgrading 1 drive at a time with the storage spaces solution.

 

My Original StableBit Drive was not a letter I would like. so I deleted the pool and created a new pool with just one drive. I reassigned the pool to drive Z: with disk management. and added all the drives I had available at the time, deleting the storage space pool and adding those drives to the StableBit pool as well.

 

At this time I had 1​4 drives (a couple 320gb, and mess of 500gb drives) all was fine until I tried to do a share. then I got some weird "the order of permissions is wrong and may cause a problem" - I looked up that error. my solution was to do a 'take ownership" of all the files in the pool (which as far as I knew where none..) once that was done I got a message that my recycle bin was corrupt and would I like to delete it, I deleted it, got the error again, and deleted it again. From here out everything was ok for a few days. I moved all my recorded TV to the drive pool

 

During the StableBit scanners pass on one of my drives I got a warning that one of my 320gb drives was possibly going to fail. No problem I threw in two more 500GB drives, after removing the potentially troubled 320gb drive. I used the 'remove from pool' did not need to do any 'forcing or anything' it hadn't written to that drive yet, so it was quick and easy.

Now adding the driv​e back seems to be a problem? like I said I added two 500gb drives. one of them I can add to the pool. the other doesn't even show up to be added in the StableBit software. The new drives were labeled O: and S: DrivePool sees the S: drive and I can add it. it doesn't see the O: drive.

 

Now I'm not sure but I *think* the failing drive was drive O: ... but I removed it from the pool before pulling it.

 

So question 1: is t​here a 14 drive limit to drive pool??? or why is it not letting me add the 15th drive???

 

Thanks in advance

[ThePaladinTech]

K so I just added 1tb 16th drive - and it shows up for adding to the pool ... just that "O:" drive will not show. what to do?

 

Also is there any problem with me re-assigning drive letters to drives in the pool? meaning I have currently 15 drives in the pool... none of them have any data on them that is not part of the pool. can I change the drive letters easily? It would be great if drive D: could be the top left drive in my case and the drives progress logically from there.

 

Again... I should've thought of that before I dumped the data on them.

 

Thanks again.

 

Update- Stuck old bad drive back in, it showed as being able to be added to pool. Removed and replaced with new drive. still wouldn't add, deleted and recreated partition on new drive, reformatted, showed up fine. problems solved. still wondering about this one thing though:

 

Pasted from above:

Also is there any problem with me re-assigning drive letters to drives in the pool? meaning I have currently 15 drives in the pool... none of them have any data on them that is not part of the pool. can I change the drive letters easily? It would be great if drive D: could be the top left drive in my case and the drives progress logically from there.​

 

Actually on that count do they need drive letters at all?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

To be honest, more info is better. Yes, we may have more to "wade through", but it's better than not enough!

 

 

There is definitely not a limit on the number of drives. I'm running with 19 drives in my pool right now, so definitely no limit. 

 

As for the drives, run "diskmgmt.msc". Make sure that none of the drives show up as "Dynamic". Check the bottom half, and the left column to make sure. It will say either "Basic" or "Dynamic".   We don't support dynamic disks due to the increased overhead of determining the physical drive layout (as we actively avoid placing duplicate data on the same physical drives). 

 

If it's still having issues identifying the drive, try upgrading to the public beta build, or resetting the settings for StableBit DrivePool: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2299585B

 

 

 

As for for removing the pool, you shouldn't need to do that to change the drive letter. You should be able to change it like any other drive (in disk management). 

 

 

As for the disks in the pool, you can remove the letters, change them, .... or ideally, mount them to a folder (which is what I do, as I said, 19 drives!)

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

(if you want help with this, head to http://meetme.so/drashnacovecubeand set up a time, and let me know what it's for). 

And no, the drives don't even need a letter. StableBit DrivePool uses the volume ID, which should always be accessible. For the for the sake of troubleshooting and access for you, leaving a letter or folder mount is a good idea.

 

As for the issues re-adding the drive, that's definitely not normal (I do so a lot, with test systems, and haven't had an issue).

If you could grab the logs from your system: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection

Just do steps #7-9.